Valentines from the Heart

Here are some of the Valentine canvases I decorated for Valentine's Day as gifts for friends. A little bit of lace, fabric flowers and a heart charm dress these up to making them sweet enough for the holiday.

For those of you who want more details, the background was covered with a piece of deli paper that was a pulled print from my gelli plate. The purple felt heart was cut out using the Brother Scan n Cut machine which I am only beginning to learn how to use. Other embellishments used were things I had on hand, like the "friends" stamp for which I used Versamark ink and then embossed the image. I also had some small pieces of lace which I used to dress up the canvas and a little bit of pink trim (top) which I had bought on clearance.

Actually the only thing I had to buy to make these were the 5 x 7 canvases. It makes me happy to use up things I have on hand, One of my favorite quotes which I have used in this blog is:

Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.

Amen.

Gelli Printing with Young Friends

Rubbing paint off Gelli Plate onto paper

Anyone who has tried gelli printing with the new gelli plates from Gelli Arts has fallen in love with the technique. The ability (for even those who don't feel very artistic) to make monoprints that are layered and painterly is addicting.

So to spread the love I got together with my good friend's  two creative granddaughters who love art. We laid out the brand new gelli plate, new tubes of colorful paint, new brayers (small rollers for spreading paint) and lots of paper and paper towels on one of their first days off for summer vacation.

It turned out to be a really special day. I felt like I was at summer camp. The girls, ages 7 and 4, took to the painting right away, and then ran away with it. I was so impressed with the color choices they made, having originally thought that they would stick with the pastel paints. I'm not sure why I thought that, but they soon started getting out the neon and the black paints and doing awesome things with them.

What a great way to spend a morning!

Here are some samples of their work:

Making sure the paper is covered with paint from plate underneath

Spreading the paint with a brayer

Pulling a print from the Gelli Plate 

A neon butterfly

A psychedelic print from the Gelli Plate